While the term “independent” usually connotes a small, scrappy also-ran in automotive historical terms, Studebaker doesn’t exactly fit into that definition. After all, at one point it was the second-largest auto manufacturer in America, largely thanks to the company’s deep historical roots, which predate the automobile by decades. While there’s not much history on this particular Studebaker taxi in Josiah Work’s article in SIA #140, March 1994, there’s plenty of Studebaker context, enough to get one to think about the company’s place in automotive history.

Dan, here we are again with a great piece directly from SIA. I asked several weeks ago about making SIA available but as yet no answer. Is there any chance of the collected works becoming available? Online, in print, etc, etc?????

Right now, this is the best way for us to present stories from SIA. To reprint the whole run would require chasing down the rights to more than 30 years’ worth of freelance articles and photos, something we’re not equipped to do.

Daniel, would this hurtle be applicable to some type of database with the articles displayed when one enters info about their question? In other words put every SIA article (including the pictures) in a searchable database that could use any number of parameters to access it?

I’ve always liked this car, but it should be stated for the sake of historical accuracy that it was a standard four door sedan that was painstakingly crafted into a cab during the late ’70s; it was not originally a cab.